AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I followed her even though she said she wanted to be alone. We both lay there, not talking, just looking up at the dark sky.
Hondo had us back on the highway a minute later. The world hummed by with the steady drone of the engine. I turned to face Brooks. She kept staring blankly at the stars. I didn’t know what to say. But I felt like I needed to say something, to bring her back from wherever she was.
I picked a few nasty demon hairs out of my mouth and cleared my throat. “I think… maybe,” I began, “I felt some kind of connection to… to something that felt like heat or the center of the earth… I can’t be sure.” I tried to find the right words. “Is that crazy?” My mind went through all the gods in my book—was there a god of the earth?
“It was probably just a coincidence,” Brooks said sharply without looking at me.
“But I could feel it… in my fingertips, like I was holding on to some rope made up of heat and energy. And it felt dangerous, like I had to control it or it was going to control me.”
“You should’ve let them take me,” she mumbled.
“But… why would they want you?”
Brooks kept her eyes fixed on the sky.
I sat up. “Are you listening?”
“I heard you, Zane! You’ve got some godly power….Good for you!”
“Hey. You okay?”
“You’ve ruined everything!” She sat up and huddled against the cab.
“Whoa! What’re you talking about? I saved you!”
“Saved?” She let out an exasperated laugh, like she was offended or something.
I wanted to argue, to let her know she wasn’t the only one freaked-out or scared or…
She fidgeted with the string on her hoodie. I was too afraid to say the wrong thing, so I bit back the words. And waited for the gears in her mind to stop turning.
It was like she was getting up the courage to tell me something I might not want to hear. I knew if I pushed too hard she’d never tell me anything.
A few minutes later she said, “Whenever I changed into a hawk, I could feel the sky. It was like a part of me. Even after I changed back, I could still feel it.” She looked up at the stars. “I tried to… I wanted to claw out their eyes, but… nothing worked.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s… it’s gone, Zane.”
I got an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What’s gone?”
“I’m… I’m not a hawk anymore.”
19
“What? How? You’re a shape-shifter. How can your power just disappear?” My pulse raced.
“How should I know? But it’s gone and—”
“Try again. Maybe you were nervous or something.”
Brooks looked at me, her face like stone. “I told you. It’s gone!”
“Brooks… what’s going on with you? Why aren’t you telling me?”
“Forget I said anything!”
She knocked on the back window to ask Hondo to stop. When he did, we climbed into the truck’s cab. Without saying anything, Brooks made it clear that I wasn’t to join her in the backseat.
